That may have been the case as recently as five years ago; I refute that it is the case now.

I installed Ubuntu on the Significant Other’s lappy when she was finding Windows XP too unreliable, and asked her to try it for a month. She found there was nothing she wanted to do that she could do with Windows but not Ubuntu, and was impressed by the speed, reliability and versatility.

The only part that didn’t work at the time was the inbuilt wifi, however, her chipset is supported in the latest release. She now recommends Ubuntu to her friends.

As for sysadmin – you only need one build for the whole State, then it’s just users. Pretty much the same as Windows.

As for linux on student laptops, don’t make me laugh. Unless teachers have really improved their IT skills in the last 10 years I doubt any teacher would be able to work out how to turn a linux laptop on, let alone show kids how to use it. They couldn’t really do it with windows, so using an OS which is harder to use that windows probably ain’t going to happen. Plus MS would probably step in and offer very competitive pricing, as they saw the IBM \ Apple tactics of the early 80’s, and we all know who won that battle.

Sad, but true. The Linux desktop has come a long way in the past few years, to the point that most average punters could use it to go online, read email, browse the web etc. But when it comes to sysadmin – there’s a long way to go yet.